Any particular reason that feedback resistors are listed as 3W, they seem to run rather cool?

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I am using 4 F5's -- with Fairchild devices driving these Pioneer (TAD) S-1eX spxrs. I have a bunch of the Renesas (Hitachi) devices but haven't used them since last year.

On the bench is an NP/aX design from the AX article -- and we are are gonna look at the THD% figures for various combinations of JFET with Idss all over the lot. I know that THD% is not the ne plus ultra stat for the definition of quality, but it's the onlu completely reliable and reproducible stat that I can produce.

Fran,
Try a new pot and also reflow your solder connections to the pot on the board and on the pot. If that doesnt do it then try reflowing the rest of your soldering. I find that usually when I have crackling due to change in volume that there is a screwed up solder joint somewhere and I have also had that happen with junk pots or nice pots with bad solder joints. Never know, if you are using a stepped pot you could have a nasty joint somewhere on there as well.
Uriah